University of Michigan librarians host dinner for Spectrum Scholars

Contact:

Miguel Figueroa

CHICAGO—Librarians at the University of Michigan Library raised over $1,000 for the Spectrum Presidential Initiative through a recent dinner for Spectrum Scholars.The dinner was organized and sponsored by Karen Downing, Helen Look, Martin Knott, Sue Wortman, and Shevon Desai, with venue space generously donated by librarian Ann Gladwin. Over forty guests attended the event including librarians, library support staff, the Dean of the Library, Spectrum Scholars, and many friends from the Ann Arbor community.

ALA President Roberta Stevens, Immediate Past President Dr. Camila Alire, ALA Past President Jim Rettig, and ALA Past President Dr. Betty J. Turock, chair of the initiative, announced the Spectrum Presidential Initiative as a special campaign to raise $1 million for the Spectrum Scholarship Program.Through this initiative, ALA aims to meet the critical needs of supporting master’s-level scholarships, providing two $25,000 doctoral scholarships, increasing the Spectrum Endowment to ensure the program’s future and developing special programs for recruitment and career development.The University of Michigan librarians’ and staff’s contributions will allow ALA to continue to support master’s-level Spectrum Scholarships and build the Spectrum Endowment.

Said the organizers, “We are especially proud of the broad support for the Spectrum Program demonstrated by our colleagues and friends—we are a profession that depends on creativity and diversity, and Spectrum has benefited our library in many ways.”

The University of Michigan Library’s mission is to support, enhance, and collaborate in the instructional, research, and service activities of the faculty, students, and staff, and contribute to the common good by collecting, organizing, preserving, communicating, and sharing the record of human knowledge. This mission is accomplished through the provision of the various collections and programs available to patrons of the library system.To learn more about the University of Michigan Library, please visit http://www.lib.umich.edu/.

The Spectrum Scholarship Program is ALA's national diversity and recruitment effort designed to address the specific issue of underrepresentation of critically needed ethnic librarians within the profession while serving as a model for ways to bring attention to larger diversity issues in the future. Since its founding, Spectrum has provided more than 700 scholarships to qualified applicants enrolled in an ALA-accredited graduate program in library and information studies or an ALA-recognized NCATE School Library Media program. To learn more about the Spectrum Scholarship Program, visit www.ala.org/spectrum.

For more information about the Spectrum Presidential Initiative or to make an online donation, visit http://spectrum.ala.org. To learn more, get involved, or to make a pledge to the Spectrum Presidential Initiative, contact Miguel A. Figueroa, Director, Office for Diversity & Spectrum at mfigueroa@ala.org, or Kim Olsen-Clark, Director, Development Office at kolsen-clark@ala.org.